Hardware raid card in a G5 tower

Does anyone know if there are any problems using the Hardware RAID card, 661-3174 : M9699G/A, in a regular G5 tower instead of a xserve?
Thanks,
Scott

The G5 tower has two designated 3.5 inch drive bays although you may be able to stuff a couple of more drives in out of the way places.
You will need to run cables from wherever the drives are installed to the connectors on the RAID card. Keeping them out of the way may be a challenge.
The Apple card requires Mac OS X server 10.3.4 or higher. No mention was made if there were any problems with Tiger (10.4) or Leopard (10.5) server.
You will need to backup or image the existing drives prior to creating the RAID.
You may want to take a look at the LSI MegRAID controllers. Word on the street is that the Apple Xserve G5 RAID card was just a rebranded LSI with Apple firmware and drivers. But the product documentation may give you some ideas on the path ahead.
Good Luck

Similar Messages

Using a Mac Pro w / Apple Internal Hardware RAID Card?

Anyone using a Mac Pro with a Apple Hardware RAID Card 2010?
( I have a 12 Core )
Is it worth the $600-700 ?
How much faster than the software RAID 0?
I see Hamm's RAID tips chart .. but it doesn't include such options .. plus it is based on a PC system.
Any tips would be great ..
I find many areas where the application is slow / unresponsive .. and I'm not sure where the bottleneck is ... Maybe the hardware RAID will solve it?
I'm really am impressed with CS5 .. it would be even better with some adjustments .. but I am absolutely disappointed with sluggish performance on my top-of-the-line Mac Pro 12 Core.
This is not what I expected for a $8,000 machine.
Some users says that the port of CS5 for the Mac has taken a back seat to the Windows version at Adobe.
I can't imagine that Adobe would not put 100% effort into Mac products.
Go Team!!!

I have a 2009 Mac Pro 3.33GHz Quad core w/ Apple RAID card, 16GB RAM from OWC, and Apple's Radeon HD 5870 GPU.
I have RAID 0 set across 3x1TB drives internally, and the standard 640GB drive for OSX and all program files. I set all video assets, renders, previews and such on the 3TB RAID.
This seems to work wonderfully. I built this system specifically to edit a feature film shot on P2 DVCProHD, and I've been impressed with how it handles it. This was all built prior to CS5, which took me by surprise. Had I known nVidia would become such a problem for Apple, I would have built a PC, but that's another story.
I just started a new project in CS5 on the same system, this time using H.264 video from my Nikon D7000, and so far, it seems to play just as nicely, despite not having hardware acceleration via CUDA technology. Yellow bars on top, even. I haven't had any problems with clips taking a long time to populate on the timeline or any of that, so perhaps the RAID card helps there.
All this aside, I've already decided to upgrade my RAID for another reason. Right now, my backup is performed via an eSATA-connected external drive through a PCI eSATA card. After every edit session, I dump everything on the RAID onto the external drive, and it goes much faster than the old FW800 transfer used to. I'm about to replace my Apple RAID card with an Areca card and set up a 4-bay RAID 3 via an SAS connection. This will allow for excellent data throughput while offering more security than my current RAID 0 / manual backup system, and free up the internal drives for backups, exports and render files.
I believe in hardware RAID, but I'm not as knowledgeable as Harm and others are about it. I had my Mac built to order with the Apple RAID card, so I have no experience using Premiere with a software RAID. Due to my smooth experience using it, I think it was worth it, but plenty of people say the Apple RAID card is rubbish, and to go with Areca or Atto cards. I didn't know about them until after I built my system, and even though it will cost a couple thousand to upgrade my RAID from this point, I expect to have an even better system than I already have.
I hope this helps, and feel free to ask any questions I didn't address.

Wanted: Apple Hardware RAID Card for Xserve G5

I have some questions regarding the original internal Apple Hardware RAID Card for an Xserve G5.
1) Does it support native hardware RAID level 5?
2) Does anyone know where I can find one of these cards? I can't even find them on eBay.
3) I heard this card is based on an LSI board. Which model? Has anyone had success using the non-Apple version of the same model board in an Xserve G5 with internal Apple Drive Modules?
4) How do you hook up this card? Do I put it in the PCI slot and move the SATA cables to it or does the presence of the card just automagically take over the drives?
Thanks for all your help!

I heard this card is based on an LSI board. Which model?
Camelot is correct that this card is based on (is) the LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 card:
http://www.lsi.com/storagehome/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sata/megaraid_sata1504/index.html
However, it has custom Apple Firmware to support booting by a PPC Xserve G5 rather than a PC. Apple also provides a ported version of the LSI Logic "megaraid" program to manage the card.
There is a bug (well, at least one) in the Apple Firmware version that was fixed by LSI Logic in its PC version subsequent to Apple's branch off of the LSI Logic code tree for the firmware. Specifically, the card sometimes doesn't fully flush its write caches before it disconnects from the drive buses on graceful power down (doesn't happen on restart). Only known workaround is to turn off the write caches for all LUNs. I turned in a RADAR report (RADAR ID 4350243) under our support agreement back in November 2005, but no action since. I follow up every so often, but clearly this EOL product is not a priority.
Has anyone had success using the non-Apple version of the same model board in an Xserve G5 with internal Apple Drive Modules?
Won't work without the Apple firmware. Apple doesn't distribute the firmware. Been there, done that. Our Apple Hardware RAID card failed in an odd way shortly after installation - it still functioned as a RAID controller once booted from another drive, but you couldn't boot from it. believe that the firmware became corrupted, and that it could have been fixed by flashing the firmware using the "megaraid" program, but Apple Support didn't have a file to flash it with, so it was handled by an RMA exchange.
RAID 5 performance is degraded with the write caches off, but our load is not heavy. I guess you could script the turning off and flushing of the write caches prior to shutdown, and turn them back on again during the boot sequence, but you'd really have to be careful to handle things like restart to CD boot, etc. We value our data more than speed.
This was a very difficult bug to troubleshoot, because the RAID 5 made the mystery garbage blocks from space very hard to find repeatably. Finally came up with a repeatable test case. Fortunately, discovered while testing the Xserve prior to deployment, so no valuable data was lost.
Russ

XServe with hardware RAID card and headless install

Today, while trying to remotely install Mac OS X Server 10.4 ("Tiger") on an Apple XServe G5 with hardware RAID card, I discovered that it did not report the IP address of the server (booted from CD) with the sa_srchr command as it did with Mac OS X Server 10.3. With Mac OS X Server 10.3, I could boot the server from the CD, use the sa_srchr command from a remote machine to find the IP address, ssh into the server and user megaraid to create or recreate the RAID volumes using the internal drives in the server.
When I boot the XServe from the Mac OS Server 10.4 CD and run the sa_srchr command from a remote computer, I get "No Longer Used" in the place where the IP address should be (as it was in 10.3 Server and as it is described in the current, 10.4 Server, "Command Line Administration" manual).
Example: localhost#2xCPUFormat#No Longer Used #xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx#Mac OS X Server 10.4#RDY4PkgInstall#3.0#512
Just as an experiment, I threw the Mac OS X Server 10.4 DVD into an iMac G5 and booted it. Using the sa_srchr command, I get the same "No Longer Used" where the IP address should be.
Does anyone know:
Is this a problem with the original "Mac OS X Server 10.4.0" installation CDs? Do I need 10.4.1, 10.4.2 or 10.4.3 CD/DVD media?
Has this functionality been removed from Tiger install discs? Is there another way to create the RAID volumes?
I know that I can use the Mac OS X 10.3 Server disks to work around this, but it doesn't seem like I should have to...
Justin Sako
Leander ISD

Are you sure you have the 10.4 Admin Tools installed on the 'client' machine? I've seen this happen when trying to set up a 10.4 server from a machine with 10.3 Admin Tools installed. Try deleting the Admin Tools from your client machine, and re-install from a 10.4 DVD.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Workaround for Hardware Raid-Card and Bootcamp

I have ordered my new Mac Pro with the optional raid-card by Apple. Since there are no drivers for Windows XP or Vista available, harddrives attached to the card cannot be used for bootcamp to boot from. But it seems the Apple ships teh new Mac Pros with all drive bays connected to the raid-card. I was wondering if i could bypass the card by detaching one of the SATA-cables and plug it into the mainboard directly to use the first (or last) drive bay for a separate boot drive (WD velociraptor 300 GB) with a partition for Mac OSX 10.5 and Windows XP (each 150 GB) on this drive. I want use the rest of the harddrives attached to the RAID-card for a raid 0 under Mac OSX only. Windows XP will use an external storage case connected by Firewire 800.

Hi,
I believe the iPass cable connects all four hard disks with a single connector. This makes it difficult to remove one bay from the Apple Card. My experience is that you either use the card for all four bays or you disconnect the card and use the stock motherboard SATA interface.
I found using an external RAID box allows me to have all four internal hard disk bays available for boot disk or boot camp use. The external SeriTek/5PM provides my RAID. I can use the HighPoint RR2314 for a five disk RAID 5 configuration or the Sonnet Tempo E4P if I want a RAID created by Disk Utility. Using multiple SeriTek/5PM enclosures can increase the performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/firmtek/5pm/
http://firmtek.stores.yahoo.net/sata5pm.html
If you want even higher RAID performance and SAS compatibility and don't mind spending more $$$ the HighPoint RocketRAID 4322 RAID 5/6 Controller provides amazing performance with the Enhance RS16 JS SAS expander enclosure. The AMUG tests show this combination can provide RAID 6, sixteen disk average write performance of 696MB/sec. and 833MB/sec. read performance.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/enhance/rs16js/
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/datoptic/rm16_ex8/
There are lots of RAID solutions available for the Mac Pro. However, I find the internal Apple RAID lack of Boot Camp support is too restrictive and higher performance is available from 3rd party solutions at a better performance to cost ratio.
Have fun!

Mac Pro included RAID Card?

Does the latest Mac Pro included hardware RAID card or software RAID if multi drive installed? Or it doesn't have RAID function?
Thank you

http://macperformanceguide.com/HardwareRAID-Main.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Backup-mirror-vs-separate.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
http://www.acnc.com/raid
Dual backups and just use Apple Disk Utility or SoftRAID for stripe arrays.
Otherwise RAID6 and then you get into $money$ and fine when you have 8TB or more.
But with 2x4TB drives in an array and cloned and backed up (hourly, daily, weekly backup sets) you can be fine.
Most people never seem to consider 3-drive mirror, then you maintain two if onne fails BUT with any array you still need backups and spares and often need to buy 'extra' drives to insure you use the same models.
Besides which it is something that is hard to just jump into w/o some background and experience and then as you grow into how and what works.
And no, RAID5 is not concatenated and can only be done with hardware RAID controllers (and not suited for today's TB drives the way it once was).
http://www.macgurus.com is where I go immersed into storage arrays 12-ish yrs ago on personal level.

Premiere Pro CS4 Unusable With Hardware RAID 0

Greetings, This is a mysterious problem I seem to be having, let me tell my tale...
I was using a software RAID0 while editing with Premiere. Even using HD clips, it was very fast! The RAID was only to serve up the footage. Scratch disk and OS disks are on separate drives.
We then upgraded to a Hardware RAID card (3ware) and migrated the data from the old to new drives, everything going fine. Finally get around to opening permiere and the project used to take 2 minutes or so to open, now takes an excruiciating 10-15 minutes! Plus the timeline that I was able to scrub through at a decent speed is basically unusable. I cannot play clips in the timeline either unless I render the preview, where on the software RAID I could play unrendered timelines with no stutters.
Went back to the software raid just to check, and it performed just as fast as before.
Of course I assumed it was a hardware issue. So I contacted 3Ware support and basically they were stumped. Then I moved onto running a whole slew of tests from HDtune on the RAID array. I was getting around 290MBps and very nice random I/O speeds, write speeds were great too. Weird. I could also open up any of my source clips in Quicktime and they would play perfect, and i could seek anywhere in the clip with no hesitation.
Still not satisified, I opened up about 250 clips in Avid MC5, (using AMA linking to make sure it's not some kind of codec thing) and made a lot of short cuts in the timeline. And lo and behold, it is playing like it is a rendered clip, and I can scrub through the timeline perfectly.
This weird HDD activity was then confirmed using a disk monitor. Take a look at the graph: http://www.bubble-engine.com/HDtune.jpg
The low evenly space out bars are activity from using Premiere Pro, when the timeline is unusable. The big solid areas are me using Avid. You can see for some mysterious reason that Premiere isn't accessing the drive properly. But again, on the software RAID Premiere behaves properly.....
Any Ideas?? This is one of the weirdest tech support things I've ever encountered...

when I click the record button, the screen goes to a blue screen with Playing on video hardware
This is normal for HDV.
How do I also get the Scene Detect to work?
With HDV?
Upgrade to CS5.

Can I make a hardware raid with the on board Marvell SE9128 chip on p67a-gd65?

Hi,
as you all know the RAID 0/1/10/5/JBOD with the p67 chipset are pure software raids or "fake" raids. I saw some sata-raid pcie 2.0 x1 cards on the sell which have the Marvell SE9128 chip. So my question is: Can I make a hardware raid with the onboard Marvell SE9128 chip on the p67a-gd65?
Thanks
--pepe

Quote from: Stu on 06-November-11, 02:31:26
Hardware RAID explained:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/perf/raid/conf/ctrlHardware-c.html
What do you want to say with this? I know what's the difference between a software (fake) and hardware raid? Your post doesn't answer the question. The p67-chipset has integrated software raid. The marvell se9128 is also found on some hardware raid cards. That's why I'm still wondering if it is for a hardware raid on this board or not.

RAID Card reports ERROR: Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18). Help!

Hi,
I have a MacPro computer that has 4 drives and Apple's Hardware RAID Card installed. It's been working great, but we first received notification via RAID Utility of the following error: 5/23/09:Battery failed (code 0x#0 = 18). We ignored it because we have a project in the works. Computer is degraded in performance, and we can tell. Restarted and got the notification: 5/24/09: Controller reports RAID System 72-hour battery reserve unavailable. System is configured to run without battery.
What shall we do to get this working again.
I reallly appreciate any and all pointers. Apples online help didn't appear to be operating correctly today, Sunday, May 25.
Thanks, and so long for now, TOM

Unfortunately, this is a widely known issue with Apple's raid card. I would get in touch with Apple as soon as possible; not online help, but actually call them.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=439873
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1405187&start=0&tstart=0

Xserve G5 won't boot off Hardware RAID partition

I'm running an Xserve G5, 2.0 GHz single processor, OS X Server 10.4.5 with an Apple Hardware RAID card with 3 500GB drive modules in a RAID 5. The RAID is partitioned into two partitions, one for the system and one for data. After installing a video card, the Xserve will not boot off of the system partition on the RAID. It will boot just fine off a clone of that exact partition on a firewire drive, which is how I have it functioning at the moment. I have tried erasing the system partition on the RAID and re-installing the Server software but whenever I try to boot it it gives me the flashing folder Icon. I have tried resetting the NVRAM as well as restoring the functional backup of the system to no avail.
Any ideas? (I have run disk utility, DiskWarrior, repaired permissions etc.) I also checked the status of the RAID and it is in optimal condition. The data partition seems to be just fine and the system partition seems normal when booted from the external drive.
Xserve, Dual 2.7 G5, G4 Powerbook, many others Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Harry, I just saw your post. I went through the same pain last fall, and it WAS resolved through Apple Support, but you aren't going to like the solution. Simply as background, during the pre-deployment testing of our Xserve, we were having problems with the Apple BTO SCSI card (really, an LSI Logic 22320) and swapped it out with an ATTO UL4D. Something in the card removal/replacement caused our Apple Hardware RAID card to go into the same mode as yours, where it would work fine as a RAID 5 (two LUNs, 50 GB and 417 GB, over 3x250 GB ADMs) but would not boot. Apple Support and I concluded that something had become corrupted in the firmware or boot code on the Apple Hardware RAID card, but they did not have a file to use to flash it, so they swapped out the card under our support contract, and that fixed it. I still believe that, if I had had a file to flash the card with using the megaraid command, that the original card would have been fixed. FYI the new card has Firmware Version: A131, BIOS Version G117, the old card had Firmware Version: A130, BIOS Version G117. Completely unrelated to this, I've had a RADAR bug report (RADAR #4350243) open since last November that the Apple Hardware RAID card fails to fully flush its write caches on graceful power down. I've got a test case that is 100% reproducible, causes mystery garbage blocks from space. I'd suggest that you turn the write caches off on all LUNs on your Apple Hardware RAID card as a workaround until this is fixed. LSI Logic (the Apple Hardware RAID card is a rebranded LSI Logic card) found and fixed this bug on a later firmware rev from Apple's version. No update is available yet from Apple.
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)
Xserve G5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

PCI ATA 66 Hardware RAID, follow up.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1015242&tstart=0
Just to recap, the problem that I was having in this archived post booting OS X from my 120GB+120GB hardware PCI ATA66 RAID0 drive, was in fact due to the <8GB partition limitation. XPostFacto doesn't enforce this on the PCI card, and it worked for a while with no helper, until after the 10.4.10 software update, which must have written some files past the 8GB portion of the drive. I can now still boot from my hardware RAID, I just have to use a helper in XPostFacto, like if you were booting a FW drive.

Just to clarify, I was talking about the ACARD ATA66RAID hardware RAID card, it works in OS9 or OSX, when you set the dip switch on the card to RAID 0 striping, the OS sees it as large SCSI drive, and you can optionally install the OS 9 drivers with Disk Utility in OS X, or initialize it in OS 9 with Drive Setup. First you have to initialize each drive individually in normal mode before setting the striping switch. Booting OS 9 has a volume size limitation, though, (<190GB or 200GB, not sure exactly) and my 120GB+120GB volume exceeds that.
I am using two individually cabled Master drives, I think you can also stripe two Slaves with this card, so then you could set up a software mirrored RAID with the two striped RAIDS, there's just not any more room in the G3 Desktop for any more drives though.
Probably not too many folks use those cards, the ACARD 6860M, they were a lot more expensive when they first came out, but you might find a good deal on one now. You can probably get better i/o peformance and larger max drive size from ATA-100, ATA-133 or SATA PCI cards, not sure of the latest price comparison on those.
From memory, the built-in ATA gets around 16MB/sec, the PCI66 can get around 40MB/sec and so can external FW, the ATA66RAID can get up to 60MB/sec. There's lots of variation in those numbers depending on usage. Not sure what numbers you get with ATA 100/133/SATA...those are also more $$$.

Mount hardware RAID 0

Hello,
I'm using a hardware RAID card. 3ware's 9650SE card to be precise, and I have 2 of these configured in RAID 0. I've done a little research around the forums and wiki and have only found information on doing software RAID, but not actual hardware RAID. I do have the FAKE raid guide in front of me, but are there any major differences in the installation the two types?
Last edited by edenxavier (2008-03-02 18:05:45)

If this card is indeed a real hardware raid controller, it will perform all raid functions itself.
This means to archlinux the entire array should be visible as 1 drive, and you can configure it just as you would any hdd.

CalDigit RAID-Card Questions

Hey all,
I'm going to be upgrading my Mac Pro setup soon, as I'm in desperate need of more high-speed hard drive space. The CalDigit RAID-Card seems like a great product, with expandability in mind, as well as some other great features.
I'm planning on doing a RAID 5 setup with all four drives (as the CalDigit RAID-Card allows you to make a RAID set bootable). Now, I've been told time and time again to not make your Scratch Drive the same as the System Drive (advice which I've always followed). However, if all four drives were RAID'ed together via RAID 5, and then, two partitions were made (1.0 GB for the system, and 3.0 GBs for the Scratch Disk), does this solve the inherent risks / performance problems associated with making a Scratch Disk the same as the System Boot Drive?
Does having the System Software on a Bootable Hardware RAID get rid of the risks via RAID'ing via software?
Or, should I just RAID 5 three of the drives, and leave one for the System all by itself? Obviously, with 4 TBs of drive space, I'm trying to maximize that amount of storage I can get internally. Thanks!

I believe their RAID card is a software RAID card, & software RAID is definitely not recommended.
Dear Jon,
When it comes to striped RAID sets, I have not found a single hardware RAID setup that can out perform a Disk Utility software based RAID configuration. When it comes to RAID 5/6 - Intel IOP based hardware RAID cards provide superior performance. In addition, the Intel IOP hardware design usually dictates that all cards with the same processor will provide RAID 6 performance that is similar regardless of the manufacturer.
Saying that software RAID is not recommended really is too little information and untrue in many configurations. Hardware RAIDs carry their own problems. When a hardware RAID card fails the user needs a replacement card that is usually more expensive to obtain, requires additional down time and may not be available at all if the company has ended the life of the product.

Apple raid card - installion lion

hi there!
I would like to install lion, due to heavy printing problems with oki fiery printer, that would not rund unter 10.6.
but I learned, installing lions to a mac pro with hardware raid card is critical.
what do I do beside having made a time machine backup, of course?
lion can obviously not build a recovery partition on a raid-card system.
Can I still install lion?
I run a mac pro, 2 x 2.93 GHz 6 Core Intel Xeon,
32 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 RAM
with a MacPro Raid Card
2.00, Firmware 1.0.2,
4 SSD 512 to a RAID 0
and a raid-controller pci for extarnal G-Speed es-pro RAID
PCI slot. cryptic to me: "Manufarcutrar 0x1103, pci1103,4320"
help is very much appreciated
I run a graphic stuio. I can not afford to have a crashed mac pro again...
and I need a printer dirver, that may print correctly.
regards
adrian

Clone your system.
Clone your RAID volume.
Clone as backup strategy.
Clean install Lion on a single drive.
Clone back.
Other options: ditch and sell Apple RAID for another PCIe controller.
Sounds like the OWC SSD PCIe card would be your cup of soup.
OWC Mercury Accelsior 240GB / 480GB
http://www.macperformanceguide.com blog
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
Gutenprint?

PCI RAID Card -- jumper settings?

Hello and thanks, the folks in these forums have always been very helpful.
Installing the PCI Raid card into the G5 was a little more involved than I expected, and while I was getting it seated one of the jumpers fell off. I don't know which one, and I am not going to install it into the new server until I get the card set up correctly.
I cannot find a pic or diagram of the default positions of these jumpers, or information on whether they even matter. The manual has no information on this aspect of the card.
Thanks again,
Steve

Thanks so much for your help.
No, it is this one below, a SATA Raid card that only works with the internal drives. I would provide a link to the manual, but it will be no help as it provides no jumper-block charts or descriptions.
PCI Hardware RAID card
This 64-bit/66 MHz PCI card provides enhanced reliability and performance to Xserve G5's internal Serial ATA (SATA) drives using a hardware RAID controller. Bypassing the on-board hard drive controllers, this card provides three independent 150MBps Serial ATA controllers backed by a high-performance RAID processor and 64MB of RAID controller cache with an on-card backup battery.
The PCI Hardware RAID controller provides RAID level 0, 1 and 5 capabilities to the Apple Drive Module bays and is managed by a provided command-line management tool. Multiple logical drives can be created, and each logical drive supports different RAID levels, different stripe sizes, and different cache policies. In the case of a drive failure in a protected RAID 1 or 5 configuration, drives can be hot-swapped and the RAID set can be rebuilt on to a new drive online while the server continues to serve data.
Note: RAID levels 0 and 1 require a minimum of 2 Apple Drive modules; RAID level 5 requires 3 Apple Drive modules. Apple recommends drive modules of the same size for each RAID set. The hardware RAID card does not support FireWire Target Disk mode.

Hardware raid card in a G5 tower

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